Hi...I'm looking for advice as this is the final straw for my dog...Hes a 8 year old staffy and has suffered with separation anxiety since the day i got him at 8 weeks old....he goes through stages where he wont do anything for a day or 2 but for the past few months hes destroyed my house to the point he ripped a door off to try and escape..ripped my settee and started to wee up my furniture...we've tried everything...2 different dog trainers..different foods...tried crating him..(he's chewed his way out of 4)...medication...walks just before we go out and last thing at night...confined him to just one room of the house....toys of all kinds...when he knows we're going out he starts whinging, panting and shaking...we leave the radio on and say nothing to him when we leave (advice from dog trainer) but nothing seems to work its just getting worse to the point my husband thinks our only option left is too have him put down...:-( hes costing us a fortune in repairs to the house...we took him vets today and he had a hormone injection which has the same effect of being castrasted to see if being castrasted will help solve this problem...Ive got a female staffy whos the same age..ive had them both since puppys and shes nothing like him..she just sleeps all the time..(she has been neutred) anyone got any ideas??!! Thank u!

Your dog has been practicing this behaviour for 8 years and has been suffering through a physiological and emotional traumatic disorder for this length of time?
You have seen your vet obviously in order to discuss this issue and they have suggested Tardack (I assume).

The problem with modifying separation anxiety (and I do believe this to be an actual, relatively rare case of actual separation anxiety) is that the management phase is difficult.

Have you had a behaviour panel done on this dog?
Has your vet referred you and your dog to an APBC behaviourist?

When you say medication what was it and what behaviour modification program was ongoing at the time?

Its unfortunate that no prgress (or am I being presumptuous?) has been seen in this length of time and that you are now talking about giving up on the dog. If this was a long term physiological-only disorder such as cancer would you be talking about it being the last straw?

I understand that this is hard for you and you have been through a lot with him but this dog is suffering and it will take real consistency to progress on this. You list lots of things but these should form the basis and only part of one program not lots of individual measures to help with this.

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try this site it might help you as it did for me because i have a 4 and a half year old boxer cross husky who has separation anxiety and hes exactly the same as your dogwww.doglistener.co.uk/fearful_dogs/separation_anxiety.shtml

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Fixed the link.

Think suggestions are along the lines of ones on tripod's Pawsitive blog and he lives in "The Doghouse"

But as tripod says, most cases are really SD distress not full blown, or Seperation Fun (like teenagers having parties).

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For eager & reliable recall, be fun for the dog to come back to! Then often send them off right away to do what they wanted!
DT&B - Glossary of acronyms & jargon terms.
Encouraging good behaviours, whilst consistently avoiding practise of bad alternatives leads to extinction of the bad. So if dog sits 6/10 times it doesn't sit 4/10 times, encouraging with the right rewards (positively-reinforcing) enough for 9/10 times means it now fails to sit only 1/10 times, sit 10/10 means...